Additive manufacturing (AM) is increasingly used to manufacture workpieces for many applications. AM is particularly useful in aerospace production, as it enables designs with complex geometries but without additional cost. Workpieces designed to be additively manufactured can be optimized to enhance performance by departing from the simple geometric designs that can economically be produced through conventional manufacturing techniques (e.g., casting and subtractive machining). One class of optimization methods is topology optimization (TO). TO allows a workpiece shape to be iteratively optimized via finite element analysis using specified (i.e. desired) optimization objectives and boundary conditions. TO can, for example, be used to generate workpiece design shapes for optimal fluid flow, structural stiffness, load capacity, and other design goals.
TO processes typically produce output surface designs in the form of stereolithography (STL) files that commonly exhibit undesirable artifacts. In particular, STL outputs from TO processes are rarely smooth, and sometimes include unwanted voids or tabs of additional material. Before the STL output of a TO process is usable, it must ordinarily be edited or entirely recreated to remove these artifacts. This clean-up process is conventionally a manual and lengthy one.